January 21–28, 1999

music|review

Albert Herring

Academy of Vocal Arts, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, Christofer Macatsoris, conductor, Jan. 17, Helen Corning Warden Theater, 1920 Spruce St., 215-735-1685.

Benjamin Britten, the composer of the dark and brooding Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, is not a composer often associated with sparkling farce. So his 1947 adaptation of a de Maupassant short story, "Albert Herring," is an especially delightful surprise. The tale is a familiar one, the emotional and social awakening of a pampered and suppressed mama's boy, but Britten embroiders the theme with political and musical references.

The story, set in the English countryside in 1900, opens at a meeting of the stuffy town ladies, who, since they cannot find a virginal girl to honor as the May Queen, choose poor Albert to be the May King. The set is dominated by portraits of Victoria and Albert, and the denouement of the Victorian age is mirrored in the plot of the tale. The apparent wickedness, and simple realism of the modern age constantly eat away at the ordered world of the ladies in the floppy straw hats and ribbons, and, by the end of the drama, the new way, personified by the liberated Albert, is gleefully triumphant.

Britten expresses this exposition in one of his most brilliant and expressive scores. The influence of Stravinsky, in the angular structure, bright timbres and acerbic harmonies, is unmistakable. But in some of the finest scenes, where Britten mercilessly lampoons the pomposity of the old order, the sly, pointed humor of Verdi, as in his comic masterpiece Falstaff, rings through. The presentation of the May King award, by the queen bee of the village, Lady Billows (portrayed with splendid farcical comedy by Katie C. Lacie), is as hilarious and insightful as Falstaff's notorious denunciation of honor, or his paean to the splendor of his mighty belly.

At the turning point of the drama, demon rum triggers the transformation of Albert into a regular human being (his drink has been spiked at the May King festival). Here, Britten inserts the famous Tristan chord into the music, the Wagnerian harmony which is symbolically viewed as the starting point of the eventual disintegration of tonality. Thus, in this innocent little comedy, Britten conjures the Freudian transformation of society, an epochal shift in the history of music, and the collapse of the British empire. That's quite a neat tour de force.

This is an unusually fine production from the Academy of Vocal Arts, with sets and production values extremely well tailored to the charming, but constricted, space of the Helen Corning Warden Theater. On all counts, a brilliant evening of musical theater. Additional performances Jan. 23 at the Helen Corning Warden Theater and Jan. 30 at Centennial Hall in Haverford, PA. Both performances begin at 8 p.m.

-Peter Burwasser